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Brent gained $1.50 in 20 minutes as the U.S. returns to a "Maximum Pressure" strategy on Iran.

oil ⬆️

Boosting the UK's growth should start with encouraging North Sea oil and gas production. Removing Ed Miliband will allow investment growth and cheaper energy. .........@ 17 mins for North sea discussion

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/to-get-the-uk-growing-again-we-need-cheap-secure/id1654809850?i=1000685305575

Share price down despite the transformational move and production guidance as HBR develops it's larger operation, does seem at odds with the future outlook.

Harbour Energy PLC on Thursday forecast increased production and an improved cash flow position as it continues to integrate Wintershall Dea GmbH.

Chief Executive Linda Cook commented: "2024 was a transformational year with the completion of the Wintershall Dea transaction delivering a step change in our scale and geographic diversification, improving our margins, increasing our reserve life and expanding our resource base significantly."

Harbour Energy expects "significantly" higher revenue of around USD6.1 billion compared to USD3.7 billion a year prior, driven by increased production.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization and exploration expense are forecast to rise to USD4.1 billion in 2024 from USD2.7 billion and forecasts free cash flow of USD1.0 billion in the coming year.

Analyst Consensus of 7 brokers = strong buy

Harbour announced average FY24 pro forma production of 479kboe/d, which included the successful start-up of the Fenix (Argentina) and Talbot (UK) projects, and ended the year with an estimated $4.7bn net debt

• The Company reported progress on developments at Maria Phase 2 and Dvalin North in Norway, and the start of a multi-pad drilling campaign at the Aguada Pichana Este licence in the Vaca Muerta play in Argentina.

• Harbour guided average FY25 production of 450-475kboe/d, which is based on a $2.4-2.6bn capex budget and expected to generate $1bn free cash flow based on $80/bbl Brent and $13/mcf gas prices in the UK & Europe.

• The Company expects to materially reduce capital investment in the UK and lower exploration and appraisal spend in Indonesia and Mexico, partially offset by expenditure on the Wintershall Dea portfolio. Harbour posted results broadly in line with expectations, with its UK-based portfolio showing a double digit decline in output that included an unplanned outage at East Irish Sea during 4Q24.

The Company now ranks above Aker BP as Europe’s largest independent E&P and is only behind Woodside and Apache in terms of global production, which has transformed its scale, geographic diversification and capital structure

Bloomberg- Gas prices much higher for much longer ..

With nearly half of the winter still ahead, European natural gas inventories are now at the same level as they were at the end last winter (early April 2024). . But the stock depletion means higher for longer nat gas prices.

European gas summer 2025 vs winter 2025-26 price spread is flying >€5 per MWh. An accident waiting to happen. The result of depleting inventories too quickly this winter coupled with EU mandates to re-build them

https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1882357854155448406

Took some more at 233p, seemed rude not too

https://x.com/surprised_trade/status/1882367312831082771

A lot of selling initially for an in line, nothing has changed RNS..large cash pile too (40% approx of mcap) ..Peter Cruddas owns 50%+ of the company so very unlikley to be any 'confusion' or 'oddities' in results and it's what CMCX do,no sugar coating etc.. As all is on track and as per guidance I fully expect sp to recover over coming days as all is as stated in today's and previous rns's

Jan 23 (Reuters) - British trading platform CMC Markets CMCX.L said on Thursday that it remains on track to achieve annual net operating income (between £320-360 million) as previously guided, and is confident of meeting its cost forecast (£225 million)

Trading update 23.01.25

The Group remains on track to achieve annual net operating income in line with previous guidance

Previous guidance-

Outlook

· Management maintaining pragmatic approach to investment with a focus on profit margin expansion, whilst continuing to explore and invest in opportunities for incremental growth.

· Remain confident in delivering on guidance set out at the beginning of the year, with net operating income forecast to be in line with external market expectations.

· Operating cost guidance for FY 2025 remains unchanged at £225 million, excluding variable remuneration and non-recurring charges.

On track to achieve net operating income of between £320-360 million.

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClhuoQ-6zE4

Malcolm Graham-Wood speaks with Manuel Pablo Zúñiga-Pflücker, President & CEO of PetroTal.

So 2025 is indeed looking good, or in their words, robust and resilient and guidance of 40/- boepd, up some 16% year-on-year, looks like it could have decent uplift potential. With Opex of $330m and Capex of $220-250m there is plenty of work to do and initial drilling has already ticked boxes in my assessment.

The biggest plus is the GE05 well at Gannet which the team are clearly delighted about, peak of 9k/- b/d and stable production of say, a bit over 6k/- b/d. At Guillemot, the W7Z well drilling proved positive and similar to B6 and GE05 and, while only 10% to Serica, ‘expected to enter production in February’.

After that ‘the COSL Innovator rig has now commenced drilling operations on the next potentially high-impact well, EV02 on the Evelyn field, with first production expected in Q2 2025’. Then its off to the BE01 well on the Belinda field which as a new field needs subsea infrastructure to be installed, but will start in April and be ready for production in 1Q 2026.

Financially things obviously will look up, material free cash flow is expected in 2025, and despite challenges last year it did not stop the company investing, especially at Triton, where upside is clear and rewards should be seen this year.

And shareholders need not worry the company will stint on the distributions, last year a very decent divvi and a small buy-back which might be repeated, not for certain but the shares yield around 15% and make the equity an outstanding investment.

And of course the company has a strong and ‘robust’ balance sheet which supports both the organic and non-organic growth and we know that SQZ has looked at everything on the market in the North Sea and in some select geographies worldwide. Also with the budget not being quite so bad for a company in its financial position opportunities in the UK are definitely not ruled out.

Indeed CFO Martin Copeland, without any tongue in cheek tells us that ‘he is quite keen to help the Government achieve a course correction’ which could actually result in a higher take over the longer term. My own view is that whilst we know that the Secretary of State has got blinkers on even he can’t have failed to see the mass exodus of the world’s finest energy companies leaving these shores and taking their cheque books with them.

Serica will without doubt be in the upcoming Bucket List, it has strength, growth both organic and inorganic and a whopping yield which gives both capital and income growth to be expected this year.

https://www.malcysblog.com/2025/01/oil-price-serica-touchstone/

21 Jan 2025, 09:00am Trading and operations update

https://www.investormeetcompany.com/companies/serica-energy-plc

Serica Energy plc is an upstream oil & gas company, founded in 2004 and now one of the top 10 UK producers. The Company produces from 11 fields in the UK North Sea, operating over 80% of its production. Since the March 2023 acquisition of Tailwind Energy, Serica’s portfolio has diversified with two main hubs producing around 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, each hub using separate infrastructure, with a virtually 50/50 balance of oil and gas. The Company’s recent investment in existing assets has more than doubled reserves to 140mmboe, whilst its strong balance sheet and very limited exposure to decommissioning position it well for future growth. The Company has been dividend paying since 2020

#PTAL state that ''every $3 increase in Brent above $77 is $10m in additional Free Cash Flow for them'

https://x.com/surprised_trade/status/1879634200497930738

Centrica Warns UK Gas Reserves ‘Concerningly Low’

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-10/centrica-warns-uk-gas-reserves-concerningly-low-after-freeze

As today's broker note states.....Higher production and cash balance than expected. Adding exploration assets

• 3Q24 production was 19,150 bbl/d including 18,938 bbl/d from Bretana and the remainder at Block 131. This performance exceeded expectations, as we had anticipated 17,900 bbl/d for Bretana. • FY24 production at Bretana was 17,733 bbl/d, which is above the guidance of 16.5-17.5 mbbl/d. • PetroTal held US$115 mm of cash (including US$103 mm of unrestricted cash) at YE24. Including payables and receivables, YE24 working capital was US$112 mm, higher than our forecast of US$107 mm. • Well 22H is in production, and Well 23H has been spudded.

Share price: £0.36 We re-iterate our target price of £1.30

https://x.com/surprised_trade/status/1877430957365506131

Price fall offers further value

Share price underperformance has become more acute in recent weeks, with the shares falling to levels not seen since early 2022. Since that time PetroTal has consolidated and grown its Brazil export route, materially grown production, and established a strong shareholder returns programme. We believe the recent price performance is unjustified, and provides an attractive entry point based on both our NAV and peer trading multiples, and on the upcoming 2025 programme.

Track record of material progress over last 36 months. PetroTal has made material progress over the last 36 months on export routes, production and cash flows, balance sheet position, and returns to shareholders.Ongoing drilling, supported by export availability, has seen production rise from an average of 9.0mbbl/d in 2021 to an expected level approaching 17.5mbbl/d for 2024, and we expect subsequent growth to a peak of 25mbbl/d average for 2027

The production has driven material cash flows for the company, demonstrating the margins achievable for the company’s onshore production (EBITDA margins are around 60%) and transforming its balance sheet: PetroTal was carrying US$23.7m of net debt at the end of 2021, and we expect this to be net cash of US$98.2m at the end of 2024. This creates a strong funding position and fully demonstrates the power of the company’s producing asset base during 2024 PetroTal acquired a 100% stake in Block 131, which contains the Los Angeles field, for US$5.0m cash. Los Angeles currently produces 817bbl/d and is prognosed to contain 4.2mmbbl of remaining 2P reserves. Existing facilities could support up to 5.5mbbl/d, giving significant opportunity going forward

Going forward, it’s fair to expect more of the same from PetroTal, further growing the business. The company is getting towards the end of a busy, successful drilling programme at Bretana, and in 2025 drilling focus is likely to switch to the new Los Angeles asset, before returning to Bretana subsequently. The company continues to work on establishing new export routes, including putting more through the existing Iquitos refinery route on the back of the Los Angeles volumes, recent test sales via Ecuador, efforts to open up a route via Yurimaguas, and potential restart of volumes via the ONP pipeline. We expect all of this to drive ongoing production and cash flow growth, and potential increased shareholder returns. This 2025 news flow should help continue to highlight to the market the significant value in the shares.

Our valuation total risked NAV 95p.

Paul Scott's comments on the drop, surprisingly they have dropped further , so offer even further value-''.. at 291p/shares, that implies a PER range of 9.7x to 14.6x. Considering that CMCX also has the benefit of £380m NTAV, a very secure balance sheet, which supports almost half the market cap, then I think this looks decent value still. I’m not sure why it sold off this morning, we seem to be in a market where people are jittery and bank profits on in line updates. On my quick review, I can’t see anything wrong, so I’ll stick with GREEN.''

Another analyst with a positive view of the stock.

Broker report out - Seplat completed its transformational acquisition of MPNU last week more than doubling production to 120kboed and nearly doubling 2P reserves to 0.9bnboe. The payment on completion of US$672m was funded from existing and new facilities without any new equity. Management highlighted the multiple improved operational and financial metrics resulting from completion and addressed concerns in the market, most notably the reinvestment potential into what has been a well run but cash starved business, thereby substantially reducing the rate of cash taxes.

...On a proforma basis, revenue jumps 245%, adjusted EBITDA increases 199% with pretax cash flow from operations (CFFO) up 187% (Figure 1). Management expressed confidence that investment into the business would result in the cash tax rate falling substantially. Assuming Seplat were able to reduce the cash tax rate to the same 23% applicable to its results for 6M24 across the enlarged group, that would imply proforma post-tax CFFO of US$499m ...

The enlarged portfolio contains multiple high-potential investment opportunities to drive growth including re-focusing on MPNU’s existing well stock and facilities, exploiting in-fill and exploration drilling opportunities, and commercialising the multi-tcf untapped gas potential. Seplat expects to increase activity on the existing MPNU assets in 2025.. and a longer term plan to commercialise the gas potential on the blocks it has acquired with this transformational transaction.

It's cheap, added a few more at 260p

https://x.com/surprised_trade/status/1868957466530304280

''...one key opportunity for CMC is its partnerships: it is providing back-end trading infrastructure for Revolut, and more recently announced a long-term strategic partnership with the Kiwi bank ASB, for whom it will provide its stockbroking technology and execution.

Outlook: much of CMC’s recent financial success has been down to its ruthless cost control. It sounds like this attitude will continue:

The bottom line for me is that the company is performing well and the long-term outlook remains positive and arguably quite exciting (for example the partnership with Revolut partnership).

With a large chunk of the market cap (now less than £800m) still backed up by c. £400m of balance sheet strength, and with a cash-adjusted PER that’s probably quite cheap (e.g. if net income is around £60m this year), I have no reason to change my GREEN stance on this.''

Stockopedia have a positive view on the stock ⬆️